Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Stop shouting at me: Why clear speech can sound angry

Date:

May 6, 2014

Source:

Acoustical Society of America (ASA)

Summary:

When loved ones lose their hearing, audiologists often counsel spouses and family members to speak clearly so they are better understood. But hearing loss professionals say that this well-meaning advice can backfire: clear speech can make you sound angry. A new study supports the idea that clear speech can carry negative overtones even when the phrase itself is emotionally neutral.

Share This

When loved ones lose their hearing, audiologists often counsel spouses and family members to speak clearly so they are better understood. But hearing loss professionals such as Shae D. Morgan, a PhD student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, say that this well-meaning advice can backfire: clear speech can make you sound angry.

Related Articles

"We often hear communication partners of individuals with hearing loss say that it seems that when they try to speak clearly, their partners think they are shouting at them," Morgan said.

Now a new study supports the idea that clear speech can indeed carry negative overtones even when the phrase itself is emotionally neutral. Morgan will present his team's results at the 167th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in Providence, RI.

In the new experiment, 18 young adults with normal hearing listened to a set of conversational and clear sentences from the Ferguson Clear Speech Database. This database includes phrases spoken by volunteers under instructions to read sentences in two different styles: first as though they were having a normal conversation (their "conversational speech" style), and a second time as though they were talking to a person with hearing loss (their "clear speech" style). Each sentence included in this study was emotionally neutral, such as in "he picked up the bid and put it away" and "use the word 'bod' in a sentence."

The University of Utah team selected sentences from each speaking style as read by speakers who had previously been classified as having either a big difference between their two speaking styles (i.e., their clear speech was perceived as very distinct from their natural conversational speech) or a small difference (i.e., there was almost no perceived distinction between their clear and conversational speech). The 18 listeners were then asked to assign an emotion category to each sentence: anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, or neutral (meaning no intended emotion).

Listeners thought the clear versions of the sentences from the database sounded angry more often and happy less often than the more natural conversational versions. Furthermore, the group of speakers who had the largest perceived distinctions between clear and conversational speech were judged to be more angry and less happy than those with smaller differences between the two styles. This suggests, Morgan said, that as a speaker begins to sound more clear, they also sound more angry and less happy.

Further work is needed to give scientists a better picture of the exact nature of the different relationships between speaking style and perceived emotion, Morgan said. However, he added that he feels that this study is a good start in helping to make audiologists aware of this potential problem.

"When we invite people to change how they speak to achieve some goal, like increased accuracy in speech understanding, we need to consider how those changes affect other perceived aspects of speech, like the emotional state of the speaker," Morgan said. "We could potentially begin searching for better ways to counsel patients and their communication partners to increase understanding without appearing angry or otherwise upset.

For example, future research may identify the acoustic differences between sentences that the listeners labeled "neutral" and those they labeled "angry." This work might be used to teach people how to speak clearly without conveying negative emotion.

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — The literary great Marcel Proust wore ear-stoppers because he was unable to filter out irrelevant noise -- and lined his bedroom with cork to attenuate sound. Now new research suggests why the ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Attendance at schools exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution is linked to slower cognitive development among 7- to 10-year-old children in Barcelona, according to a new ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — No significant change in home habits of smokers have been observed in the aftermath of a ban on smoking in public spaces, researchers report. Greater inspiration to kick the habit likely comes from ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Heart function has been associated with the development of dementia and Alzheimer's disease through a new study. Participants with decreased heart function, measured by cardiac index, were two to ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Children of recently separated or divorced families are likelier to drink sugar-sweetened beverages than children in families where the parents are married, putting them at higher risk for obesity ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Although sedatives are often administered before surgery, a randomized trial finds that among patients undergoing elective surgery under general anesthesia, receiving the sedative lorazepam before ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — It appears that stress markers in unemployed people can be found, independent of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight/obesity. Results from a study suggest that long-term unemployment may be ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — On the heels of an American nationwide measles outbreak comes a report that campaigns aimed at scaring people about the consequences of non-vaccination might not be as effective as many think. ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Doctors write millions of prescriptions a year for drugs to calm the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. But non-drug approaches actually work better, and carry ... full story

Related Stories

Oct. 29, 2014 — Is it possible that hearing loss in one infant from a pair of twins can affect the mother’s speech to both infants? A new acoustics study zeroes in on this question and suggests that not only is ... full story

July 31, 2014 — Prolonged exposure to loud noise alters how the brain processes speech, potentially increasing the difficulty in distinguishing speech sounds, according to neuroscientists. Exposure to intensely loud ... full story

June 25, 2014 — Patients with persistent ringing in the ears -- a condition known as tinnitus -- process emotions differently in the brain from those with normal hearing, researchers report. Tinnitus afflicts 50 ... full story

May 19, 2014 — Six-month-old infants require more information from a cochlear implant than an adult or older child, a study has demonstrated. This may be due to the lack of experience infants have with speech and ... full story

July 16, 2013 — Whether you're reading the paper or thinking through your schedule for the day, chances are that you're hearing yourself speak even if you're not saying words out loud. This internal ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.